As Social Marketing Director at Billian, Jennifer Dennard is responsible for the continuing development and implementation of the company's social media strategies for Billian's HealthDATA and Porter Research. She is a regular contributor to a number of healthcare blogs and currently manages social marketing channels for the Health IT Leadership Summit and Technology Association of Georgia’s Health Society. You can find her on Twitter @JennDennard.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, CardioMEMS was the winner of this year’s Intel Innovation Award, presented at the Health IT Leadership Summit earlier this month. CardioMEMS has a number of development firsts to its credit, bolstering its recent claim to innovation fame:

First wireless communication system for the human body

First medical implant completely wafer fabricated

Only FDA-approved, permanently implanted wireless sensor

Essentially, the company has developed a first-of-its kind wireless (and battery-less) heart failure monitoring system. As Richard Powers, Vice President of Information Systems, explained to me on my field trip to CardioMEMS’ relatively new offices in Atlanta, the company has figured out a way to, in the least traumatic way possible, implant a cardiac sensor that monitors pressure and wirelessly transmits that data directly to a patient’s physician via a Web-based portal.

When I first came across the company nearly two years ago, the term “Big Data” hadn’t quite gained the buzzy reputation it has now, so I feel confident in saying that CardioMEMS’ analytics team were a bit ahead of the game – not surprising, given that the company was founded by Dr. Jay S. Yadav, its current CEO and still a consulting cardiologist.

In talking with Yadav, I realized he and his colleagues recognize not only the importance of back-end data, but also the value of simplicity. As Powers pointed out, the sophisticated technology isn’t in the device itself, but comes after on the receiving end. Ideally, physicians will use data transmitted from the sensor to gauge cardiac pressure changes and adjust medication accordingly.

The timing of this technology couldn’t be better, in my opinion, since so much attention is being paid to preventing readmissions, increasing quality outcomes and improving patient satisfaction scores. Benefits of the sensor in clinical trials include fewer hospitalizations, lower cost of care and an increase in quality of life. And I do believe the CardioMEMS team has even figured out the reimbursement angle with CMS, which should make provider adoption of the devices that much more likely.

Pending FDA approval is the only thing holding up a full-court product marketing press, which may, when that approval comes, be aided by partnership with a select provider organization.

I couldn’t leave the CardioMEMS offices, of course, without asking about its plans to integrate into an EMR. According to Powers, integration of the physician portal into an EMR is in fact on the drawing board yet. They are also looking at ways to pull a patient’s EMR data into the CardioMEMS portal. The company is currently working with the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech to look into EMR interoperability.

I’m confident we’ll be seeing some really interesting developments from this company in the near future.

As Social Marketing Director at Billian, Jennifer Dennard is responsible for the continuing development and implementation of the company's social media strategies for Billian's HealthDATA and Porter Research. She is a regular contributor to a number of healthcare blogs and currently manages social marketing channels for the Health IT Leadership Summit and Technology Association of Georgia’s Health Society. You can find her on Twitter @JennDennard.

While a good majority of the healthcare industry had their industry news pipelines filled with coverage from the mHealth Summit earlier this week, nearly 600 of us in Atlanta were also taking in coverage of the third annual Health IT Leadership Summit, a day-long affair that offered great sessions on a range of topics. Several key themes emerged, based on the #GAHealthIT tweet stream:

the value of social media in healthcare, especially in the area of patient education and engagement

the need for innovation, and a viable entrepreneurial ecosystem for that innovation to develop

the need for better alignment of incentives and

the increasingly important roles employers, payers and employees are starting to play in the accountable care conversation.

This was one of the few conferences I, personally, have attended that kicked things off with a patient’s perspective of the state of the healthcare industry. Ross Mason, Founder of Healthcare Institution for Neuro-Recovery and Innovation (HINRI) Ventures and a quadriplegic. Mason is the real deal when it comes to the patient’s perspective. He has a compelling story to tell about the sub-par state of healthcare and he told it well. He pulled back the covers on the educational, emotional and financial helplessness so many patients and their caregivers feel in times of critical care. I highly recommend you check out his story and mission he has created for HINRI here.

Mason was a tough act to follow, but Lee Aase, Director of Social Media at the Mayo Clinic, somehow managed to pull it off. Actually, thinking back on it, there couldn’t have been a better pairing. Both men’s presentations were a testament to the power storytelling can have in transforming healthcare. Aase’s, of course, revolved around stories told via social networking and new media.

I have expressed my enthusiasm for his keynote in previous blogs, and he did not disappoint. He used self-deprecating wit, family pictures, hilarious and at times very dated news footage to tell Mayo Clinic’s social media adoption story. I won’t go so far as to say I’m his biggest fan (I imagine the three darling grandchildren he mentioned in his address vie for that honor), but I did go so far as to have him autograph his book for me. You can find “Bringing the Social Media #Revolution to Health Care” here.

Here are just a few of some of my favorite slides, out of the 138 he shared with us. You can view the complete deck here.

I’ll follow up next week with a more detailed look at the winner of the Intel Innovation Award, which was presented to CardioMEMS at the summit. I was able to take a field trip to their offices, and was amazed at the potential a tiny wireless sensor designed for chronic heart failure patients is likely to have on a number of different areas in the industry.